Category: Recruiting

When it comes to diversity, referrals get a pretty bad rep. It’s easy to see why. Birds of a feather do flock together. Your employees will probably refer people who are similar to them. Before you know it, you have a diversity problem. So you like referrals, but you also like diversity. Are you being forced to choose between your favorite children? Maybe not. Tons of companies are exploring ways that referral programs can improve diversity. Seattle-based company Glowforge had an all-male software engineering team. They introduced a new external referral program. Nine months later, that same team was 50 percent female. This wasn’t just some fluke. According to Lightspeed Ventures, referral programs are one of the top, low-cost methods to[…]

Many employers know and use an ’employee referral program,’ often shorted to ERP. Employees can refer someone they know to the company. If the hire is successful, the employee gets a bonus, such as paid vacation or cash reward. ERP’s in this sense are strictly in-house, and operate only within the company. But there’s another, more versatile kind of ‘ERP’ – the External Referral Program. In HR circles, it’s been called a lot of different things: Community referral program Non-employee referral program, or NERP Bounty hiring program Open referral program … and so on. NERP, ORP, CRP – whatever you like to call it, external referral programs are an in-and-out-of-house program that engage the community to find top talent. Now, let’s go[…]

At Drafted, we believe that referrals are an invaluable source of top talent. Research has our backs on this, too – data consistently shows that referrals lead to candidates with longer tenures, broader diversity, and better performance. Despite this, a lot of hiring managers are still wary of referral programs. Why? We asked around, did our research, and saw some of the same issues coming up. Here are 5 common hesitations employers have about referrals – and why they’re wrong. Misconception #1 ‘I already have too many candidates’ We get it – Your ATS is overflowing with candidates. You have interviews lined up for weeks and are getting more emails than you can handle. Turning down a promising referral because you have ‘too many’ other candidates[…]

Why You Shouldn’t Outsource Your Recruiting Process A version of this post originally appeared on the Greenhouse Blog – In any organization, hiring needs are constantly changing. Growth plans change, talent comes and goes, and critical roles need to be build. Pressure mounts, and more often than not, teams of all shapes and sizes end up hitting a point where they ask themselves the same question: “Should we outsource our hiring?” The smart answer: no. Outsourcing is appealing to address quick and pressing talent needs (such as hiring a handful of new BDR’s), especially if you have some gaps in your internal talent acquisition (TA) team. But relying on external TA – like relying on any function outside of your organization – can[…]

A company, divided… in a good way. Everwise is a company built on two coasts. After selling their last company, Audium, to Cisco in 2006, Mike Bergelson and Colin Schiller, decided to try their hand at another big problem: career development. In 2012 they started building Everwise, the talent development company that helps customers like MasterCard, Oracle, Sony, and Salesforce develop and retain their valuable workforce. And they’ve built it from New York and San Francisco. Now at 100 employees, the business-side of Everwise resides in San Francisco, while product and development are based in Manhattan. From the start this 2,910 mile divide meant that Everwise had to be an organization built on maturity and collaboration — traits that carry[…]

It’s 2017. People go across the city with Uber, and across the country with AirBnb. They clean their houses with Handy, and walk their dogs with Rover. This is the gig economy; the term being thrown around by everyone from business writers to Hillary Clinton. It’s the trend of employment from long-term, stable positions to short-term, ephemeral services by freelancers and contractors. But the majority of talent acquisition (TA) and HR teams have no plan for flexible talent management. Statistics from a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study called The Future of Work showed the stark contrast between expectation and preparation: Professionals who can find, recruit and mobilize freelance talent will be more and more valuable to companies, particularly small business and fast-moving industries.[…]

This week’s news brought yet another cautionary tale about what happens when companies deprioritize diversity. While we all claim that diversity matters, we put it on the backburner while we focus on revenue growth and product innovation. However, a new report from Lightspeed Ventures about startup recruiting trends suggests that with a few simple recruiting practices, hiring for diversity might be easier than you think. Unlocking the mystery of diversity hiring starts with a program that you’ll find at almost every startup, across all growth stages: the referral program. The reality of startup recruiting: one third of hires come from referral programs Referral programs are the second most common of all human resource programs, only after new hire onboarding,[…]

If you limit yourself to an in-house referral program, you’re neglecting the majority of talent in your network As we’ve written about before, employee referrals are a valuable, powerful tool for building teams. There are several types of employee referrals, and companies with referral programs have higher retention rates and are overall more effective than other sources of hiring. But many companies just incentivize their employees to make referrals – and stop there. In doing so, they’re ignoring a much bigger network of potential talent from which they could be getting introductions to candidates. Even without an external community referral program, 41% of referrals come from outside of your company already. A robust, community-sourced referral program should extend to clients,[…]

It’s a match! For both parties involved, the hiring process is a little bit like dating. It’s confusing, and often you don’t know where to look for the right opportunity. You usually dress a little nicer than usual for first dates and interviews, and both sometimes end in rejection. You usually go on a few crummy ones before you find a good match. Here at Drafted, we’re professional matchmakers. We believe the connections between people are one of the most effective forces in creating and maintaining strong teams. So before you swipe right, let us give you a couple tips on how to make sparks fly with your next hire: Don’t go on blind dates – get referrals from friends Getting[…]

Lately, you’ve been wondering about whether your talent team is really effective. Are they doing a better job than if you did it yourself? You’re a founder, CEO, COO, or VP. You want to hire faster. You want to hire only the best. You want your organization to be fast and free of bureaucracy. You hired a talent acquisition (TA) team to solve this. But it seems like they’re not getting enough great people in the door. You think something along the lines of — these talent people are all the same. It always seems like they’re always doing data entry and unnecessary gatekeeping, we end up just paying external headhunters an arm and a leg anyway. Before you replace your talent[…]